


Night Shift

by oldmythologies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro (Voltron)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 20:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10601877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmythologies/pseuds/oldmythologies
Summary: Shiro wakes up in the middle of the night. Like usual.





	

_ It wasn’t every night,  _ he told himself.  _ Just most nights _ .

He peeled himself out of the sheets, sticky with sweat, and sat on the stiff alien bed. It was a comfy little room, he knew. He knew he’d had worse. He couldn’t entirely remember, but he knew it had been much darker. Cold. He can still feel the cold sticking to his skin from the dream, despite the perfect temperature controls in the Castle of Lions. He peeled off his sweat soaked shirt and placed it next to him, letting the air touch his confused skin.

He would never be able to tell the Alteans how much he appreciated the neutral blue lighting that lined every single hall, the clean white walls. It was the polar opposite of the harsh reds, purples, and steels favored by the Galra. He silently thanked them as he wandered through the empty ship, damp sheets and shirt in hand, as he slowly made his way to the laundry room.

He was a soldier, through and through. No matter how little sleep he was running on, Shiro couldn’t stand having a messy bed. Even if it happened most nights, he hated the constant grime he felt trying to sleep on top of the sweat drenched sheets. Most nights he found himself in the laundry room.

It was a comforting smell in the alien ship. Somehow, no matter the planet, soap smelled similar everywhere. He breathed it in as he stepped into the dim room, not bothering to turn up the lights. His eyes were perpetually suited for darkness in a way he knew they hadn’t been before the Galra. He tried not to dwell on it, for sanity’s sake.

The washing machines here were odd, but by now he had them down to a science. He didn’t know what the buttons he was pressing meant. He pressed them in the order he had learned from Coran, the hatch opened, and he shoved in his sheets and sleep shirt. He pressed a button with an image of something like a three-headed bird on it, the hatch closed, and Shiro slunk down across the opposite wall to wait for the sheets to be clean.

This was always the worst part, this wait right here. He didn’t have any tasks left to do, anything left to do with his hands. He tried to push back the nightmares as long as possible, tried to find tasks, like putting the sheets in the washing machine. Sometimes he wanted to go check on his paladins, make sure everyone was sleeping soundly. He didn’t want to risk any of them being up and questioning why  _ he  _ wasn’t asleep. He didn’t want to have to answer that question, didn’t want to burden them with his issues.

He remembered the constant low hum that permeated the laundromat whenever he went in his garrison days. There were always people talking and moving because that’s just how Earth was. As much as he missed being surrounded by people, by life, it wasn’t what he missed the most. He missed the familiar sounds of the machines, of zippers clinking against the inner barrel of the dryer and that one overloaded washing machine that whirred just a little louder than the rest. The Alteans were apparently too advanced for that, with their automated hatches and magical buttons. It was comforting that even they couldn’t improve soap, and Shiro breathed in the smell once again, trying to ground himself.

He was working very hard to keep his mind focused on pleasant things, on soap and laundromats. His brain searched for the next random path of thought and was found lacking. The nightmare was still to fresh in his mind and as hard as Shiro tried not to dwell on it, it kept pushing its way to the surface of his consciousness.

He wasn’t sure if this one was memory or imagination. He got little glimpses of the same scene every few days but still couldn’t fit them together. A little part of his brain was always devoted to trying to fit the little glimpses together. He ignored that part of his brain because he didn’t like the picture it was making. It felt like lucid dreaming, he knew he wasn’t in control but his body kept moving.

His arm glowed and he plunged it into her throat —

Except that wasn’t real, he had to remember. It was a dream, not a memory. Not a memory. Never a memory. He tried to ignore the fact that he could almost remember the rest of the fight too, the large alien warrior woman bashing his body so hard he flew into a pillar, shattering it. He could remember his arm being new, fresh, he didn’t really know how to use it yet. It hurt so bad, his stump was still bleeding.

His blood kept trying to gunk up the new mechanisms but the constant glowing energy kept burning away the red liquid before it could do any harm. He didn’t have any control yet, the arm was always  _ on  _ and it was so powerful, he could never forget the burns he gave himself on accident.

Lost in his memories, Shiro didn’t notice when his arm started glowing. He didn’t notice when his breaths came more irregular and heavy, filling the room with small sounds and light. He didn’t notice when he started sobbing and shaking, lost in the memories of a time not so long gone.

_ She kept poking him with knives, and he couldn’t get away. She wouldn’t leave him alone, prodding with everything she had. It  _ hurt  _ and he couldn’t get away, he could feel the knives breaking his skin time and time again, reshaping, molding him, he just wanted her to  _ stop—

He didn’t notice his body curling in on itself, trying to protect himself from her cruel ministrations, his legs tucking in and arms hugging togeth—

He shouted when his glowing right arm clasped around his left and jolted back to reality, snapping back to a tense sit as he shut down the weapon perpetually attached to his body.

Shiro tried to breathe deeply as the sobs and pain kept wracking his body, even as he tried to ground himself with the Altean blue lights, the smell of soap, the smooth, calm white walls. Deep breaths, he can deal with the bubbling, burnt skin on his left arm as soon as he calms down. A new scar, one inflicted by his own insanity.

He need to  _ get it together. Get the fuck together, Shiro, get your mind back, god damn it _ . 

“Shiro?” A sleepy voice asked from the doorway.

Shiro took a moment to process Lance, standing there in his lion slippers and blue robe, wiping his eyes and yawning in the early morning.

_ He can’t see me like this _ .

Shiro quickly pushed himself up the wall with his unbreakable right arm, trying to wipe his eyes of tears with the injured left. He tried his best to not show the burn to Lance. He put on a shaky smile as Lance narrowed his eyes at him.

“Lance!” Shiro exclaimed, putting on a tight smile, pretending his voice wasn’t tight and straining with the effort of keeping steady. “What are you doing up?”

Lance squinted at him in the dark.

“I heard yelling.”

Shiro gulped. “Sorry, I…”  _ What was he doing?  _ Not sobbing on the floor like a child. No he was their fucking leader, he could think of a god damn lie.

“I…”

He corded his hand through his hair, wincing at the pull of his new burns with the action.

“I was…”

He couldn’t think of anything, nothing but the glowing yellow eyes and shouts of the crowd  _ what was he doing he wasn’t doing anything he’s fine _ .

In Shiro’s fervor to think of something, anything to get Lance to go back to bed and leave him alone, he didn’t notice Lance’s eyes widen as they locked onto the burn currently marking his forearm. He didn’t notice his own breathing stutter, irregular and heavy in his chest, or his hands clenching his hair just short of pulling it out. He didn’t notice the shorter man approaching him like a scared animal, hissing under his breath as he got a better look at the burnt bubbling skin of Shiro’s left arm.

Lance had never seen Shiro without the long-sleeved turtleneck. He knew that Shiro had scars, of course he knew, they all knew. He was familiar with the long gash across Shiro’s nose and it wasn’t a stretch to assume that it was one many, but it was different, seeing them. The puckered marks all across his lower abdomen weren’t just discolorations now, but evidence of stabbing. The three parallel scratches in Shiro’s shoulder spoke of long sharp claws tearing into flesh. They were each an echo of pain that Shiro had to go through, of injuries that he never deserved to receive but did anyway.

Lance’s heart sank in his chest. Shiro looked a lot smaller like this.

It hit Lance like a ton of bricks. When it came down to it, Shiro wasn’t much older than the rest of the. How old was he? Lance remembered Shiro about to graduate when he got there, which meant…  _ oh my god _ . Shiro didn’t deserve to be destroyed like that, so young. It was so hard to remember that Shiro was college-age at the oldest when he was trying so hard to be the rock that everyone else needed. Now, hiding in the corner of the alien laundry room, Lance couldn’t help but see the kid aged beyond his years by the rough, pale skin and white hair that spoke of so much agony.

Lance didn’t really know what to do, how to get Shiro’s eyes to look up, to focus on him. So he just went with his instincts.

Lance grabbed Shiro’s shaking shoulders and, careful of his injury, pulled Shiro to his chest. Shiro tried to jerk away at first, yelling “I’m fine, I promise I’m fine, I swear it’s okay—” but Lance refused to let go, instead threading his long fingers through Shiro’s hair, cradling the back of his head, forcing Shiro’s own hands to relax. They sank to the ground, Lance gently pushing Shiro to lean on his waiting shoulder.

Shiro melted into the soft touch, so alien to a man more used to something, well, alien. Shiro wrapped his arms around Lance in his soft robe as Lance started drawing small circles on Shiro’s scarred back.

Shiro was still crying, quivering in Lance’s arms; the material at his shoulder grew wet with tears.

“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry, I promise, I’m better than this, I’m okay—”

Lance shushed him and squeezed him even closer.

“It’s okay to not be okay.”

Shiro whimpered and Lance felt the accompanying rush of tears. In the morning, they would have to deal with the burn and everything else that came with the night, but for now, Shiro fell into a peaceful sleep, the type he didn’t think Shiro had had in years.

Tomorrow they could take the first step to make sure he could sleep this well for good.

**Author's Note:**

> This is all your fault [@galactic-davey](https://galactic-davey.tumblr.com/), [@melonbugg](https://melonbugg.tumblr.com/), and the entire voltron legendary pilots discord server.
> 
> Yell with me on the internets [@oldmythos](https://oldmythos.tumblr.com/)


End file.
